Juanita “Nita” Travis lived in 16 homes during her 67 years of marriage to Milton Earl “Mickey” Travis. He had a love of designing and building houses, even though he had no formal training in architecture.

“We were married a year and he built a house; we stayed in it two years, then he had to build another,” she said.

She recalled getting settled into a house he'd built — “clothes hung up, pictures on the wall” — and then finding him drawing up another plan. “I knew better than to object,” she said. “Each house was better than the last one.” He built 11 over the years in addition to numerous workshops, barns, greenhouses and other structures.

Travis died Oct. 11 from complications of a stroke. He was 85.

The couple first met when they were 12 at Horace Mann Junior High. “We met across the seventh-grade teacher's desk, and he went home and told his mom that he met the girl he was going to marry,” Nita Travis said. Even so, they didn't start dating until they were seniors at Jefferson High. They went on to have “a wonderful life,” Nita Travis said.

Mickey Travis was a partner in the family painting business, L.E. Travis and Sons. He later started Milton E. Travis Painting and Decorating, running it out of his home with his wife keeping the books and answering the phones.

Lawrence recalled he began working in his grandfather's workshop when he was 6. “It started out as building birdhouses,” he said. “We'd crank 'em out.” He credits his career choice to the creative lessons he learned from Mickey Travis. “I do visual effects for feature films,” he said. “I got that from him.”

Mickey Travis was especially important to Masser. “My grandfather became my father figure very early; he took me hunting for the first time when I was 8.”

Mickey Travis bought 600 acres near Utopia when Masser was about 12 and began developing the property. “He built a lot of stuff out there,” Masser said. “He spent the next eight years developing that property primarily for me to hunt.”

Masser and Lawrence also were taught how to treat a lady. “My grandfather cared a lot about being a gentleman,” Masser said. He remembered his grandfather told him, “A man knows that a woman wants him to buy her a dress so that she feels like a lady,” he said. “I have bought my wife plenty of dresses.”